Lauren Nelson

Who is Lauren Nelson?

Lauren Paige Nelson is a beauty queen from Lawton, Oklahoma who holds the Miss America 2007 title. Nelson is the second consecutive Miss America and sixth in the history of Miss America to hail from this state.

Nelson was Miss Teen Oklahoma 2004, and in this role, she performed at the 2005 Miss America Pageant. En route to Miss America, she won the Miss Oklahoma State Fair local title and then competed in the Miss Oklahoma pageant for the first time on June 11, 2006, and was crowned Miss Oklahoma 2006, for which she received a $16,000 scholarship. At age nineteen, she was the youngest contestant to become Miss Oklahoma.

Nelson went on to represent Oklahoma in the Miss America 2007 pageant broadcast on CMT from the Theatre for the Performing Arts on January 29, 2007. She won a preliminary swimsuit award on Thursday night, becoming her state's first Swimsuit preliminary award since 1955. At the conclusion of the live telecast, Nelson was crowned the 82nd Miss America. She succeeds Jennifer Berry, of Jenks, Oklahoma, in the first occurrence of consecutive winners from the same state since Mississippi won in both 1959 and 1960.